Common Core
- Page 4
These pages are intended to help inform parents and school officials about
the dangers of Common Core:
Rather than teaching American history and promoting Patriotism it teaches
progressive ideology and suppresses Religion

Logan Albright is a Research Analyst at FreedomWorks, and is responsible for
producing a wide variety of written content for print and the web, as well
as conducting research for staff media appearances and special projects.

He received his Master’s degree in economics from Georgia State University
in 2011, before promptly setting out for D.C. to fight for liberty. He is a
firm believer in the Austrian School of economics and the rights of
individuals to live their lives as they see fit without government
interference.

One of the most pernicious aspects of Common Core is the data collection
that has come hand-in-hand with the standards.

The Department of Education has been extremely tight-lipped about what kind
of information schools are actually collecting, but we know from anecdotal
evidence that students are being asked to surrender all sorts of personal
details without parental knowledge, much less parental consent.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan has stated that he wants to be able to track
students from preschool all the way to their careers using personally
identifiable information (PII), and a report from the Department of
Education presented a wish list of data collection, including the terrifying
concept of monitoring facial expressions and eye movements for diagnostic
purposes.
Photo Credit: David Mercer/AP

Photo Credit: David Mercer/AP

Once this data is collected, it is sent to the federal government, where it
can be shared across agencies, and any number of bureaucrats can learn
sensitive information about your children.

In response to this, a state representative from Arizona is spearheading an
effort to stop this unconstitutional practice.

Rep. Mark Finchem is working on a project called “It’s My PII,” which is
seeking an injunction against the federal government’s ability to collect
PII without parental consent, and challenging executive action from the
Department of Education under President Barack Obama.

The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is supposed to protect
student-data privacy and parental rights, but in 2012, the Department of
Education issued regulations greatly loosening those protections.

While the executive branch has the authority to direct the actions of
Cabinet agencies, it cannot unilaterally alter existing laws without
Congress writing new legislation. In spite of this, educational authorities
are using the president’s order as a justification for collecting data in
violation of FERPA as written.

“It’s My PII” contends that this is illegal, and is collecting resources to
launch litigation against the government, as well as preparing legislation
to stop the further collection and distribution of PII in the state.

The idea that the government can track everything about students should be
frightening to anyone who values the right of self-determination. The data
collected through standardized testing can be used to create a profile on
children that follows them throughout their whole lives, especially given
that the data is able to be shared across many governmental agencies.

What’s worse, the Arizona attorney general determined in 2014 that parents
cannot opt their children out of state-mandated tests. So not only is data
being collected without parental consent, but it is actually illegal for
parents to refuse the tests where that data originates.

The opt-out movement is one that has been sweeping the nation in response to
Common Core’s onerous testing requirements and the gross violations of
student privacy. The issue has gained such attention that federal education
bills currently working their way through Congress have been peppered with
amendments intended to stop the government from bullying students over
opt-outs, authored by pro-liberty lawmakers Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Rep.
Matt Salmon of Arizona.

The effort to stop this kind of federal meddling in education — for which
the Constitution grants no authorization whatsoever — has implications far
broader than Arizona. A successful challenge could greatly restrict the
government’s ability to violate your privacy in general, and reduce the
Department of Education’s regulatory power considerably.

The federal government has shown itself incapable of restraining its own
power on issues of regulations and data collection. If meaningful reforms
are going to be made, they are going to have to originate in the states.
Once successful, they can then serve as a springboard to national change.

The Arizona effort to protect parents’ rights and student privacy is a great
first step towards a freer education system for us all.

TheBlaze contributor channel supports an open discourse on a range of views.
The opinions expressed in this channel are solely those of each individual
author.

Choose To Refuse: Say "No" to PARCC/SBAC Testing

Michelle Malkin 1/28/2015
Michelle Malkin

This is National School Choice Week, but I want to talk about parents'
school testing choice. Moms and dads, you have the inherent right and
responsibility to protect your children. You can choose to refuse the
top-down Common Core racket of costly standardized tests of dubious academic
value, reliability and validity.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

I'm reminding you of your right to choose because the spring season of
testing tyranny is about to hit the fan. Do you object to the time being
taken away from your kids' classroom learning? Are you alarmed by the
intrusive data-sharing and data-mining enabled by assessment-driven special
interests? Are you opposed to the usurpation of local control by corporate
testing giants and federal lobbyists?

You are not alone, although the testing racketeers are doing everything they
can to marginalize you. In Maryland, a mom of a 9-year-old special needs
student is suing her Frederick County school district to assert her parental
prerogative. Cindy Rose writes that her school district "says the law
requires our children be tested, but could not point to a specific law or
regulation" forcing her child to take Common Core-tied tests. Rose's
pre-trial conference is scheduled for Feb. 4.

The vigilant mom warns parents nationwide: "While we are being treated like
serfs of the State, Pearson publishing is raking in billions off our
children." And she is not just going to lie down and surrender because some
bloviating suits told her "it's the law."

Pearson, as I've reported extensively, is the multibillion-dollar
educational publishing and testing conglomerate -- not to mention a chief
corporate sponsor of Jeb Bush's Fed Ed ventures -- that snagged $23 million
in contracts to design the first wave of so-called "PARCC" tests.

The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers raked in
$186 million through the federal Race to the Top program to develop the
nationalized tests "aligned" to the Common Core standards developed in
Beltway backrooms.

As more families, administrators and teachers realized the classroom and
cost burdens the guinea-pig field-testing scheme would impose, they
pressured their states to withdraw. Between 2011 and 2014, the number of
states actively signed up for PARCC dropped from 24 (plus the District of
Columbia) to 10 (plus D.C.). Education researcher Mercedes Schneider reports
that the remaining 10 are Arkansas, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio and Rhode Island.

State legislators and state education boards in Utah, Kansas, Alaska, Iowa,
South Carolina and Alabama have withdrawn from the other federally funded
testing consortium, the $180-million tax-subsidized Smarter Balanced
Assessment Consortium, which administered field tests last spring to three
million students in 23 states. In New Jersey, the parental opt-out movement
is "exploding," according to activist Jean McTavish. Many superintendents
have conceded that "they can't force a student to take a test," NJ.com
reports.

Last week, Missouri withdrew from PARCC, while parents, administrators and
the school board of the Chicago Public Schools spurned PARCC in the majority
of their 600 schools.

In California, the Pacific Justice Institute offers a privacy protection
opt-out form for parents to submit to school districts at
pacificjustice.org. PJI head Brad Dacus advises families to send the notices
as certified letters if they get ignored. Then, be prepared to go to court.
PJI will help. The Thomas More Law Center in Michigan also offers a student
privacy opt-out form at thomasmore.org.

Don't let the bureaucratic smokescreens fool you. A federal No Child Left
Behind mandate on states to administer assessments is not a mandate on you
and your kids to submit to the testing diktats. And the absence of an
opt-out law or regulation is not a prohibition on your choice to refuse.

Here in Colorado, the State Board of Education voted this month to allow
districts to opt out of PARCC testing. Parents and activists continue to
pressure a state task force -- packed with Gates Foundation and edu-tech
special interest-conflicted members -- to reduce the testing burden
statewide. For those who don't live in PARCC-waivered districts, it's
important to know your rights and know the spin.

In Colorado Springs, where I have a high-schooler whose district will
sacrifice a total of six full academic days for PARCC testing this spring,
parents are calling the testing drones' bluff about losing their
accreditation and funding.

"The Colorado Department of Education is threatening schools to ensure that
95 percent of students take these tests," an El Paso County parent watch
group reports. "Be assured that MANY parents across Colorado -- FAR ABOVE 5
percent in many schools -- are refusing the tests, and not one school yet is
facing the loss of accreditation, funding, etc. As long as schools can show
that they gave a 'good faith attempt to get 95 percent to test, they can
appeal a loss of accreditation' due to parental refusals to test."

You also have the power to exercise a parental nuclear option: If
edu-bullies play hardball and oppose your right to refuse, tell them you'll
have your kid take the test and intentionally answer every question wrong --
and that you'll advise every parent you know to tell their kids to do the
same. How's that for accountability?

Be prepared to push back against threats and ostracism. Find strength in
numbers. And always remember: You are your kids' primary educational
providers.

The Bufalo News report was not good. “Students in
Buffalo statewide make
modest gains in math,” declared an article in the New York newspaper
detailing the results from the
second year of Common Core implementation.

Well yes, math scores did overall improve [that's strange it's not the way
I understand this]. But, the rest
of the report was not quite so rosy:

Despite another full year of preparation by schools after the rollout of
state Common Core
tests in 2013, there were no dramatic, across-the-board gains in English
this year. Large-city
districts saw slight year-to-year improvement, but wealthier suburban
districts statewide
actually saw overall declines on the English exam.

The detailed grade proficiency results in New York from 2012 through 2014
are downright
embarrassing. Even the most successful schools weren’t spared from Common
Core. Take Ledgeview
Elementary School, for example. This school boasted a 91.2 percent
proficiency in 2012 for
third grade math. The next year, those scores slid down to 76.3 percent.
It ticked back up slightly in
2014 to 82 percent, but that was small consolation.

City Honors School, a top rated school in the state, had an impressive
90.2 percent proficiency in
eighth grade ELA in 2012. That shot down to 80.4 percent in 2013.

Most tragically, the schools already struggling were hit hardest by the
new program. The Harriet Ross
Tubman Academy, which had a 25.7 percent in third grade math, is now down
to two percent.

While Buffalo had minor gains overall, the main issue is worth repeating:
The minor gains in Buffalo were
carried by a relatively small number of schools, with the vast majority
showing little to no improvement.

Many suburban schools saw significant declines in their eighth-grade
scores this year. In
Clarence, 52 percent of eighth-graders were proficient in English this
year, compared with 64
percent the previous year. The decline was more dramatic in math – 30
percent were
proficient this year, compared to 59 percent last year.

Despite these undeniably poor results, State Education Commissioner John
King said this year’s statewide scores are “encouraging.”

I guess these students have to bring home ‘F’s to their parents before
King dares to criticize the new program.
Unlike King, many parents and teachers are now rejecting the new Common
Core standards. In a new
poll released by PDK International and Gallup, 60 percent of those
surveyed said they oppose the
educational standards. What’s more, an education journal named Education
Next found that 76
percent of teachers supported Common Core last year, but in 2014, that
number has dropped to 46
percent.

In addition to hurting test scores, Common Core is threatening children's
educational foundations with
its misleading lessons. Take, for instance, the program's take on American
history. Rebecca wrote
about Common Core’s new standards for the AP US History exam, which leaves
out inspiring details
about our Founding Fathers and portrays America in a negative light.

Every state should take Governor Bobby Jindal’s (R-LA) lead. The Louisiana
governor is fighting to
delay Common Core implementation in his state.

Although a judge recently ruled against his efforts, Jindal is taking the
right steps to try and defend these educators' freedom to teach as they
wish,
without worrying about these government standards.

Common Core is not in the best interests of students or teachers. How many
more bad grades do
children have to receive before the program is scrapped?

[One judge is putting himself about the wisdom of the entire state of
Louisiana. There must be a way to impeach judges, some of the
egotistical fools don't belong on the bench.]

Big money is saying to heck with the people - Bill Gates needs to look at
the idiots controlling his foundation -- because I can't believe Bill has
become so stupid.

Common Core
Becomes a Nightmare

7/8/2014 Phyllis
Schlafly

Americans are waking up to
how bad Common Core really is for education, but its nightmare does not go
away quickly. Liberal education bureaucrats ("educrats") are now trying
to enforce Common Core through the courts, with one lawsuit already filed
in Oklahoma and another likely in Louisiana.

In both states the
governors tried to get rid of Common Core, but parents are shocked that it
may return by court order as nonelected educrats claim they have more
power than the state legislature and governor combined. The Oklahoma
legislature approved a law to repeal Common Core, and the governor signed
it, but now its state board of education has filed a lawsuit to bring it
back.

The Washington Post has
revealed how Bill Gates used his nonprofit foundation to spend hundreds of
millions of dollars behind the scenes to force this disaster on the
American people. The Gates Foundation doled out a fortune to various
education groups, to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and to teachers unions
to force Common Core on all students.

A group that received
nearly $2 million from the Gates Foundation to help implement Common Core,
the National Association of State Boards of Education, is the same
organization behind the lawsuit to reinstate Common Core in Oklahoma.
Joining this effort is a member of the state board of education, which is
not elected by the people.

The NASBE is a private
group that received $1,077,960 from the Gates Foundation in 2011 "to build
the capacity of State Boards of Education to better position them to
achieve full implementation of the Common Core standards”. It is
unaccountable to the public. About two years later the NASBE received
another $800,000 "to provide training and information to implement Common
Core State Standards" and to help develop it, too.

The lawsuit, which claims
that the state constitution does not permit the legislature and governor
to repeal Common Core, was filed directly in the Oklahoma Supreme Court,
and there will be no appeal to whatever that court decides. The people of
Oklahoma are apparently at the mercy of an nonelected state board and its
liberal state supreme court, and the U.S. Supreme Court will not get
involved in this issue of state law.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin
signed the bill to repeal Common Core a few weeks before her primary,
which she then won in a landslide. But why isn't she or the legislature
doing anything to remove from office the members of the state board of
education who refuse to implement the repeal of Common Core?

A similar fiasco is
shaping up in Louisiana, where Gov. Bobby Jindal has courageously stopped
Common Core. Or, at least, so everyone thought, until the educrats there
began planning a lawsuit to defy the governor and impose it anyway.

The Louisiana State Board
of Elementary and Secondary Education voted 6-3 to "lawyer up," as
Breitbart.com put it, in order to sue its own governor for withdrawing
Louisiana from both Common Core and the Partnership for Assessment of
Readiness for College and Careers, which controls the testing to implement
Common Core.

Jindal pointed out that
the state board did not seek competitive bids on the expensive tests for
the schools, as is generally required by state law on most contracts in
order to save the state as much money as possible. Both the Louisiana
state superintendent and the president of its state board of education
defiantly predicted that Louisiana would remain in Common Core and its
testing for the 2014-15 school year.

The Obama administration
has reportedly already poured $370 million into developing tests to be
forced on the states. But many of the biggest states, including heavily
Democratic states such as New York, are reconsidering their participation
in the federally funded tests.

New Jersey is now
considering pulling out of Common Core, with Gov. Chris Christie facing a
dilemma that may determine whether he is a viable presidential candidate.
Does he stand up for local control over education by stopping Common Core
in his state, as Jindal has done in Louisiana, or does he try to play both
sides of the issue?

Meanwhile, parents in
areas already implementing Common Core are discovering that they are
unable to help their children solve elementary arithmetic problems.
Bizarre, tedious and convoluted methods of teaching children basic
arithmetic are causing parents to search the Internet for answers, and
some of these parents are turning to home schooling to escape the madness.

But even home schooling
may not help, if colleges all convert to the new testing standards based
on Common Core guidelines. The tests are what drive curricula, and
home-school curricula will need to adapt to the new tests in order for the
students to be admitted to college.

More Common Core Pushback: Tennessee Quits Common Core Aligned Test Tennessee
has removed itself from the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness
for College and Careers testing consortium aligned to the Common Core
national education standards, joining the ranks of 18 other states
pushing back against Common Core.
Read more here

Bobby Jindal Issues Order to Scrap Common Core

6/19/2014 - Leah Barkoukis

Defying state lawmakers and a top education official, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced on Wednesday plans to pull Louisiana from Common Core education standards and federally subsidized standardized tests, declaring on Twitter that the Bayou State will not be bullied by the federal government.

Speaking in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, Mr. Jindal said he sent a letter to the Partnership for the Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers notifying them that the state will not use the tests it is developing for Common Core. He also issued an executive order requiring state education officials to have competitive bidding for the standardized tests.

He also directed the state education officials to develop “Louisiana standards” that state lawmakers could take up in their next legislative session.

The legislature did not act to scrap Common Core during its legislative session earlier this month.

While Jindal’s move would make the state the fourth in the nation to back out of Common Core, Indiana, South Carolina and Oklahoma all did so with support from the legislative branches, so don't think this isn't going to go to court.

Meanwhile, a top education official in the state says Jindal can’t unilaterally get rid of the standards so they will implement them anyway.

“The state will continue to implement the Common Core Standards… this is a long term plan we have been working on for four years and committed to another 10 years of implementation. We are not willing to subject our children to last minute changes to throw our system into educational chaos,” said John White, the state’s superintendent of schools.

Since the Louisiana governor showed early support for Common Core standards, some are calling his change of heart a political maneuver as he considers a run for the White House.

“This is an important enough matter where we’ve got to take a stand, and as governor of this great state, one of my responsibilities is to make sure we don’t give up on our Tenth Amendment right,” Jindal said, reports the Washington Times. “That we don’t give up to the federal government powers that don’t belong to the federal government. These are powers that belong to state and local government. This is an important enough fight.”

Jindal said he eventually came to see Common Core as a federal takeover of local education, but it’s just as likely he’s got his eye on 2016.

The theme of this article seems to lean more left than the Tower of Pizza,
notice the header does not refer to Gov Jindal as Governor -- then the
comment that the Gov is doing this because he wants to be president ("eye on
2016") -- I think the writer may be biased against the Governor and off
base, Common Core is a terrible teaching method, if you don't think so then
do their math yourself - ridicules.

Indiana was one of 45 other states to adopt the national Common Core standards
when it was fashionable to do so.

Now, however, Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) has done away with the standards altogether
with the stroke of a pen -- and some help from Indiana's state legislature, of
course:

Gov. Mike Pence signed legislation today requiring Indiana to adopt its own
academic standards and opt out of Common Core — making Indiana the first state
to opt out of the controversial national standards.

The law basically solidifies action already in the works to redesign Indiana’s
academic standards by the Department of Education and the Center for Education &
Career Innovation, the agency Pence created to coordinate all education levels
and job training.

“I believe our students are best served when decisions about education are made
at the state and local level,” said Pence in a release about Senate Bill 91.

“By signing this legislation, Indiana has taken an important step forward in
developing academic standards that are written by Hoosiers, for Hoosiers, and
are uncommonly high, and I commend members of the General Assembly for their
support,” he said.

Common Core opponents will hail this as a victory -- both politically and for
Indiana’s children, too. But at least one education expert who opposes Common
Core on the merits isn’t happy with the recommended replacement standards that
will supplant Common Core, either:

An education expert sought by Gov. Mike Pence to review part of the proposed
academic standards intended to replace Common Core says the draft is a
warmed-over version of the national standards.

Sandra Stotsky, a retired University of Arkansas professor and well-known Common
Core opponent, has told Pence she won’t take part in the state’s drafting
process unless a new version of the standards relies little on Common Core.

Still, Gov. Pence’s signature puts Indiana on the map as the first state in the
nation to do away with the standards they once embraced. Meanwhile, other states
are beginning to question their decisions to adopt Common Core. The Heritage
Foundation has constructed a useful graph charting the 15 states that either
refused to adopt the standards in the first place, or are now beginning to have
second thoughts about them:

Problems with Common Core have been well documented. But it remains to be seen
if other states will follow Indiana's lead, or just keeps the standards in
place.

Get
To Know the Common Core Marketing Overlords

Michelle Malkin 3/21/2014

They're everywhere. Turn on Fox News, local news, Animal Planet, HGTV,
The Family Channel or talk radio. Pro-Common Core commercials have been
airing ad nauseam in a desperate attempt to persuade American families
to support the beleaguered federal education
standards/testing/technology racket. Who's funding these public
relations pushes? D.C. lobbyists, entrenched politicians and Big
Business interests.

The foundational myth of Common Core is that it's a "state-led"
initiative with grassroots support that was crafted by local educators
for the good of all of our children. But the cash and power behind the
new ad campaign tell you all you need to know. For parents in the know,
this will be a refresher course. But repeated lies must be countered
with redoubled truths.

The Bipartisan Policy Center is one of the leading Common Core ad
sponsors. It's a self-described nonprofit "think tank" founded by
a pantheon of Beltway barnacles: former Senate Majority Leaders Howard
Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell.

"Lobbying tank" would be more accurate. The BPC's "senior fellows"
include K Street influence peddlers such as liberal Republican Robert
Bennett, the big-spending Utah senator-turned-lobbyist booted from
office by tea party conservatives; former Democratic Agriculture
Secretary and House member-turned-lobbyist Dan Glickman; and liberal
Democrat Byron Dorgan, the former North Dakota senator who crusaded as
an anti-D.C. lobbying populist before retiring from office to work as,
you guessed it, a D.C. lobbyist.

Jeb Bush's "Foundation for Excellence in Education" is also saturating
the airwaves with ads trying to salvage Common Core in the face of truly
bipartisan, truly grassroots opposition in his own home state of
Florida. As I've reported previously, the former GOP governor's
foundation is tied at the hip to the federally funded testing consortium
called PARCC (Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and
Careers), which pulled in $186 million through the Obama
administration's Race to the Top program to develop Common Core tests.

One of the Bush foundation's top corporate sponsors is Pearson, the
multibillion-dollar educational publishing and testing conglomerate.
Pearson snagged $23 million in contracts to design the first wave of
PARCC test items and $1 billion for overpriced, insecure Common Core
iPads purchased by the Los Angeles Unified School District, and is
leading the $13.4 billion edutech cash-in catalyzed by Common Core's
technology mandates.

In December, you should know, the state of New York determined that
Pearson's nonprofit foundation had abused the law by siphoning
charitable assets to benefit its for-profit arm in order to curry favor
with the Common Core-peddling Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Pearson paid a $7.7 million settlement after the attorney general
concluded that the company's charitable arm was marketing Common Core
course material it believed could be sold by the for-profit side for
"tens of millions of dollars." After being smoked out, the Pearson
Foundation sold the courses to its corporate sibling for $15.1 million.

Then there's the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has joined the
Clintonite-stocked Center for American Progress to promote Common Core
and has earmarked more than $52 million on D.C. lobbying efforts.

Two D.C. trade associations, the National Governors Association and the
Council of Chief State School Officers, continue to rubber-stamp Common
Core propaganda. They are both recipients of tens of millions of dollars
in Gates Foundation money. NGA employed Democratic education wonk Dane
Linn to help shepherd through the standards; Linn now flacks for Common
Core at the D.C.-based Business Roundtable lobbying shop, another
leading sponsor of the ads now bombarding your TVs and radios.

Despite its misleading name, the NGA does not represent all of the
nation's governors, holds only nonbinding resolution votes, and serves
primarily as an "unelected, unrepresentative networking forum," as
Heartland Institute scholar Joy Pullmann put it, with funding from both
taxpayers and private corporations. NGA's Common Core standards writing
meetings were convened in secret and are protected by confidentiality
agreements.

Direct public input was nil. Of the 25 people in the NGA and CCSSO's two
Common Core standards-writing "working groups," EdWeek blogger Anthony
Cody reported in 2009, six were associated with the test-makers from the
College Board, five were with fellow test-publishers ACT, and four were
with Achieve Inc. Several had zero experience in standards writing.

Achieve Inc., you may recall from my previous work, is a Washington,
D.C., nonprofit stocked with education lobbyists who've been working on
federal standards schemes since the Clinton years. In fact, Achieve's
president, Michael Cohen, is a veteran Clinton-era educrat who also used
to direct education policy for the NGA. In addition to staffing the
standards writing committee and acting as lead Common Core coordinating
mouthpiece, Achieve Inc. is the "project management partner" of the
Common Core-aligned, tax-subsidized PARCC testing conglomerate.

Who's behind Achieve? Reminder: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
has dumped $37 million into the group since 1999 to promote Common Core.
According to a new analysis by former Georgia State University professor
Jack Hassard, the Gates Foundation has now doled out an estimated total
of $2.3 billion on Common Core-related grants to thousands of recipients
in addition to NGA, CCSSO, the Foundation for Excellence in Education
and Achieve.

As they prop up astroturfed front groups and agitprop, D.C.'s Common
Core p.r. blitzers scoff at their critics as "black helicopter"
theorists. Don't read their lips. Just follow the money. This bipartisan
power grab is Washington-led and Washington-fed. It's not a conspiracy.
It's elementary: All Common Core roads lead to K Street.